[PD] dinosaurs: fibonnaci and taking cues from analog processes

[Phil Stone]

Very rich sound, Damian.  I'd say you nailed your goal.


Phil Stone



Damian Stewart wrote:
> hey list,
>
> back when i started using pd, some years ago, i can remember 
> struggling to
> find anything made using it that sounded _good_. it seemed to be great 
> for
> making 8bit sounds and tinny FM synthesis; but not so good for the big
> lushness one might expect a DSP synthesis thing to be capable of.
>
> so.. over the last year i've been developing a bunch of techniques for
> making things sound 'rich' in the way that analog gear can sound. the
> techniques are based on ideas of inexactness and shifting over time,
> recognizing that in an analog system concert A will never be exactly 
> 440Hz,
> and it will shift over time as the conditions change, disrupting our
> brain's pattern-recognition systems and leading to a more rewarding sonic
> experience.
>
> the thing i'm most proud of right now is [d-fbdelay~], which is a stereo
> feedback delay with built in highpass and lowpass filters and a
> tape-flutter emulation effect. the tape-flutter is responsible for 
> much of
> the richness of the synth sounds, i think. it works by smoothly changing
> the delay time of the delay channels slightly - by 1% or 2% - over 
> time, to
> simulate an every so slightly worn out tape motor. it also effects the
> filter parameters. (for a nice demo grab the lowpass filter slider and 
> whip
> it up and down quickly - it should make a click that disappears
> beautifully off into the ether.)
>
> the other nice thing is [d-modes] which outputs MIDI notes for incoming
> scale degrees based on a current tonal mode (eg ionian, dorian, phrygian,
> lydian..), and includes a small amount of random detuning to further 
> break
> up the randomness. scale degrees are being triggered by a random function
> with a fibonnaci distribution so that the tonic and dominant are 
> triggered
> more often.
>
> then there's the [d-biquadcalc-*] objects, which rebuild ggee's biquad
> filter objects in pure pd. these are a work in progress.
>
> and [d-reverb2~] just wraps [rev3~] from the help patches.
>
> anyway.
>
> attached you'll find dinosaurs.tgz, which contains _dinosaurs.pd and a
> bunch of support files extracted from my own dlib (which, yes, i still 
> need
> to get around to releasing). it is pure-pd and will definitely work 
> with any Pd >= 0.40.3, and perhaps earlier. it might throw some errors 
> about mrpeach objects but don't worry about that, i'm not using them yet.
>
> at the moment the only real problem is that the biquad filter
> clicks sometimes when you change the sliders. i don't think there's a way
> around this, unfortunately. i might have to do a new external version of
> [biquad~] that internally ramps the values to avoid this.
>
> let me know if you like it.
>
> myself, i could listen to it for hours. it's very late, and i should 
> be in
> bed, et cetera; but i think this might be the way to make the phantom 
> music
> i hear sometimes in fans and ducts and air conditioning systems in empty
> offices and industrial spaces; the sounds of pieces of machinery slowly
> wearing themselves down to nothing, the sound of dead dinosaurs burning,
> ruining our winters. and what do you know, it's just the fibonacci 
> sequence...
>
> d
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